Porsche Panamera D: Capital D

Gone are the days when diesel engines were crude and dirty and would leave you with a coughing fit if one of them drove past. Today, they’re highly refined, clean enough to meet current emission norms and sometimes grunty enough to match a petrol engine! Plus diesel is available in the remotest corners of the country.

And the Panamera diesel is not slow or sluggish by any standards – it’ll hit 100kph in 6.8seconds and a top speed of 242kph. And it still manages impressive consumption figures. Despite all the pedal-to-the-metal highway driving and hours of wasting fuel waiting for jams to clear up, the Panamera D ran 8.7km for every litre.

So here we are, at the president’s doorstep, driving this car 1500km after filling up the 100-litre tank only twice. No other sportscar would have managed that. And no, we didn’t do any more damage to the ozone layer than an electric car would have – generating electricity damages the ozone layer anyway, right?